The Intermission Pt8

Somehow, not only did my father supposedly finish cleaning in half an hour but the treadmill area had been rearranged a bit so that the inner center focus where all the treadmills faced was a single standalone treadmill. This treadmill was where my father decided to place me while a scattered dozen-plus joggers were curiously watching.

My father set the machine at a brisk jogging pace that was faster than what everybody else was currently running at and gave me a wireless pulse wand to hold onto before telling me to get moving. After this, as the building started filling up with early morning health nuts, I spent the next hour surrounded by over a hundred used and empty treadmills simply being watched running in khaki cargo shorts and a light sweater.

After a full sixty minutes of basically running for ten miles my father brought my a large bottle of water and some cracker snacks while I took a break.

Surprisingly, after I stopped running and sat down on the treadmill most of the people who were still exercising also stopped while everyone who was already done came over to talk to my dad. While this in itself was probably normal, most of the people were talking about me and seemed to already know that I was his son.

Only then did I remember that I was being used as motivation training advertisement in the gym for the past few days. At first I was confused and a little concerned about all of these different people who seemed to know me but then conversation began turning to Bygone Era and how most of these people either already played or were about to start playing. Apparently, my dad had been talking up the fact he was working on a virtual reality workshop based in Bygone Era.

Unbeknownst to me, though, he had two workshops in mind as well as other plans. The top floor would be converted into the VR center with the left side dedicated to a simple VR platform for general training purposes that would allow for twice the training time. On the other side of the building- ironically right over the ladies' locker room- would be the Bygone Era workshop.

The money making sca- scheme here was that my father required previous experience on top of a three-day crash-course in his training platform before being eligible to join the Bygone Era workshop. Even after that there would only bee a handful of different positions available and all interested parties would have to compete for it.

Not just in VR form but anyone seeking an active combat role would have to prove their actual fighting ability through a small tourney here in the actual gym. Based on the set-up of just my clan's private dungeon and the party size we had cleared the Elder Oak Challenge with, there would be two 'combat teams' and the others would be some form of crafters and general support characters.

He aimed to bring in sixty people on the project and had already ordered all of the necessary equipment.

After learning all of this over the course of ten minutes worth of hectic conversation I was suddenly bombarded on a personal level by numerous people asking questions about myself or the game. Completely unprepared for such an occurrence I could only awkward make a simple introduction and talk about the 'complicated' realism aspects of the game that made it so much fun for me to enjoy.

Once the number of people talking to me grew as it seemed like they were allowed to openly interview me, the questions about the game or I began to gain depth and I started feeling even more uncomfortable. How long have I been training for and how many fights have I actually been in were easy enough to answer but questions about my personal life that randomly cropped up were just unnecessary.

After giving a few short lectures about the importance of being self-sufficient and self-sustainable with the acquisition and use of most goods in the game, I started redirecting questions away from me and to my creative consultation thread. Even though people without characters were limited in activity to only a few areas of the forum, anyone at all could still go in and look at everything on the forum.

Securing my personal safety by giving every an all-inclusive basic, intermediate, and even advanced guide to most facets of the game, I use the excuse of finding food to attempt running away. Sadly, my father had other plans in mind. As soon as I tried to make an exit he made a reappearance from among the small crowd and led me away to the front of the building.

It was only now that he was taking advantaged me me to attract a large niche of people to the gym while also performing some basic Public Relations work for my own image. However, I cared less about what I looked like to people in reality than I did in the game. In Bygone Era, I was terrifying while in reality… I was a meathead.

Next on my list of things to do today was to go out and test my general weight limits with the various forms of equipment while only lightly working out. The same people who had basically interviewed me earlier followed us up front and attracted even more people to watch as I found my max bench pressing weight of only two hundred and thirty pounds.

There were quite a few people in the gym who could do better and even made it known through different kinds of remarks, but a general lack of appreciation was shown for their interruptions by the others who almost proudly informed them that I was only just recently seventeen and was not a part of any sports or groups and instead played video games all day and night.

If one were to look at it in that light, being able to manage one's own body weight alone was already an achievement among average people. Being a gaming addict and also being able to do one hundred push-ups at all was record worthy. After these conversations happened more and more I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

For a moment I actually wondered if I was becoming famous or simply trending but then just accepted the fact that whatever was happening was actually happening and there was nothing I could do about it. Luckily, my stats gradually spoke for themselves as I went through more tests with dumbbells, free weights, and even a leg machine. I could curl a hundred pounds five times, which was actually much less than the last time I had done this.

Of course, I had already tired myself out with running and yesterday I did my maintenance work out- which really only prevented me from losing muscle mass and maintained a certain extent of cardio.

Luckily, I could squat twice my own weight and each leg was actually capable of working more than just my own body. I could even perform sit-ups while hugging two large fifty-pound weights. However, none of this could compare to explosive power and hit tests.

In the front left self-defense training area of the gym were several different machines with striking pads that could measure the force of a person's punches and kicks. One of these was my father's preferred test that measured full-body explosive force. It was basically a small cushioned wall that one would tackle to measure a full-body output of strength.

Starting from lying on one's back in front of the machine, you would roll over and get up to throw yourself into the wall to see how much sudden strength you could unleash. This was similar to American football training but yielded surprising results when done correctly. For me, I shouldered sideways into the wall in roughly one second from a prone position and struck with my shoulder and curled arm leading the impact for a little over a thousand pounds of force in a small contact area.

That was the weight a tiger was supposed to be able to carry up a tree while holding in its mouth.

When it came to a simple straight punch I struck the a different machine's pad for a reading of over two hundred PSI. A simple head-height kick from the side carried three times my weight in force and could end a person's career if struck with my shin. However, my strongest attack was a full-body punch that I stepped sideways and leaned heavily into with a full extension and twisting of my arm to fully incorporate the carpi muscles of my forearm.

The machine read that this punch carried just under a thousand pounds of force which essentially carried the same full-body strength as my explosive tackle. If I wanted to, I could basically call this my Tiger Punch because of its comparison to a tiger's own strength.

After twenty minutes of going through these fitness and combat tests, my father finally let me take a break on my throne in the concession stand simply recovering from the ordeal with a giant bag of jerky and copious amounts of water. Business at the concession stands was actually pretty good that day as people came up to ask me about my personal training and the advanced training that my father gave me but obviously did not offer in his gym.

I simply told them that I had been practicing the family martial arts since childhood and working out ever since I hit puberty at around thirteen. As for the training that my dad did not offer in his gym, I revealed that this was simply related to weapons only and everything he taught me was the same stuff he taught here.

Of course, there were only a few sets of attacks for all thirteen weapons of the human body taught to the people of the gym. So, technically speaking, the people who took my father's self defense course only knew about a third of the family style that I did. Even less if you considered what I basically had to teach myself about weapons.

After four hours spent in the gym, I was both glad that I had been dragged here and disappointed. I was glad to see that I had actually become popular and that I was still scary strong for a young adult but I was disappointed that none of the ladies of the gym seemed to have taken an interest in me. I was not nearly as popular as I wanted to be, yet!

Luckily, for my old man who would have had to eat one of my punches in front of his own gym, I was too tired by the time everything was said and done to put some glove on. Instead, I just killed time as peacefully as I could manage until my father finally told me it was time to take me home at around ten in the morning.

Dad did not say much on the ride home, sometimes he would make a comment about the gym or the game and how interested people were becoming in both. I was too mentally tired to maintain any real conversation after having dealt with so many people today in such an awkward setting, so I mostly just remained quiet. Every now and then, though, I would point out the numerous points of interest in such a game that would appeal to anybody in the world- such as money!

When I was finally dropped off at the house it was to find that everybody was now awake and busy in the living room. Instead of my own gameplay on the TV, though, the screen was divided between several paused or playing videos related to the game. Some of them were new and related to the update but the one current playing was one of the original interviews performed by a gaming magazine in which a developer and several beta testers discussed some of the simpler mechanics in Bygone Era such as general character interactions and stat synergy.

My little brother and sister were attentively writing down useful or interesting information while my mother was simply watching her own shows nearby. It seemed like my brother and sister really took the idea of playing the game with me very seriously. From the turnout at the gym, my parents were probably seriously considering letting them play at night.

I simply sat down with the two of them and listened in as the forever questionable Luck stat was receiving its first ever review in the magazine interview. Luck stat secretly determined everything from the mindset of an NPC when you first meet to the amount of which possible loots you do and do not receive per kill. Even the chances of breaching armor and other defenses were effects by Luck.

After a while they moved on to discussing the synergy between certain basic classes and the different starting races. One of the beta testers now took the time to point out the different kinds of play styles such as competitive, free-time, role playing, and even hardcore soloists as well as how each race or class would work in their favor. However, the developer on the panel made a point to remind them- and thus the world- that the true hardcore race was the human race that had the most negligible starting points and the classless class that had the heaviest restrictions.

The reason I had first decided to go with a human and classless character was because of all these same discussion points about play style and synergy. Not just because I wanted a hardcore character to prove my personal gaming skill level but also the most restricted but highest Luck class in the game to prove my actual combat and other skill levels. Even though the developer or testers never brought it up, the fact that the developer had made those obvious corrections to the discussion together meant they had their own hidden synergy of sorts.

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